The Power of Choice: The Life and Ideas of Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman Speaks: Equality and Freedom in the Free Enterprise System (B1238) – Full Video

Thomas Sowell — Dismantling America

Thomas Sowell Brings the World into Focus through an Economics Lens

Wealth, Poverty, and Politics

Hoover Institution fellow Thomas Sowell discusses poverty around the world and in the United States. Poverty in America, he says, compared to the rest of the world, is not severe. Many poor people in poverty in the United States have one or two cars, central heating, and cell phones. The real problem for the poor is the destruction of the family, which Sowell argues dramatically increased once welfare policies were introduced in the 1960s.

Plot

In the summer of 1902 Frank Ashton, an educated young man from London, is on a walking holiday in Devon with a friend. When he falls and twists his ankle, Ashton is helped at a nearby farmhouse and stays there for a few days to recover, while his friend goes on. Ashton quickly falls for the village girl who looks after him, Megan David, and she falls in love with him, to the great distress of her cousin Joe Narracombe, who wants her for himself. Ashton and Megan spend a night together, and after that he takes the train to a seaside town to cash a cheque at a bank, promising to return the next morning and take Megan away with him and marry her.

On arrival in the town, Ashton finds a branch of his bank, but it will not cash his cheque, insisting on first contacting his branch in London. While he is delayed, Ashton meets an old school friend, staying at a local hotel with his three sisters, of whom the oldest is Stella Halliday. Thanks to the bank’s delays, he misses the train he needed to catch to make his rendezvous with Megan. During the day that follows, he spends more time with his friend and his sisters, and while Stella flirts with him he begins to have second thoughts about marrying Megan.

Megan then travels to the seaside town looking for Ashton, carrying her luggage for running away. He sees her on the beach and follows her into the town, but when she turns and catches a glimpse of him, he hides.

Twenty years later, Ashton is married to Stella and they are motoring through Devon. They have no children. Ashton visits the farm where he seduced Megan and is recognized. He learns that Megan was heart-broken about losing him and also that she died soon after giving birth to a son, who she named “Francis”, or Frank. He is taken to see Megan’s grave, which is at the spot where he had arranged to meet her. She had asked to be buried there, to wait for his return. In motoring away with Stella, Ashton passes his son, young Frank, who gives him a friendly wave.

Story 1: Brian Williams The Leading Likeable Liar News Anchor Suspended Without Pay by NBC for Six Months — Damaged Goods — Toast — NBC And Williams Will Terminate Contract For Breach of Trust — Williams Lied — Viewers Do Not Trust Him — Fire Him Now And NBC Staff and Executives That Hid The Truth — Video

Kelly File: Brian Williams Suspended By NBC For 6 Months Without Pay

Brian Williams suspended for 6 months without pay

Brian WIlliams lies to the American people for over a decade about being shot down in a helicopter over Iraq in 2003. Donald Trump had to step in and fire Brian WIlliams, because NBC wouldn’t. Update – NBC suspends WIlliams for 6 months without pay.

Did Brian Williams Lie About Seeing A Body Float By His French Quarter Hotel Window?

Brian Douglas Williams (born May 5, 1959) is an American journalist who was the anchor and managing editor ofNBC Nightly News, the evening news program of the NBC television network. Williams assumed the position on December 2, 2004.[2] In 2005, NBC News was awarded the Peabody Award for its coverage of the Hurricane Katrina story, the award committee stating that Williams and the NBC staff displayed the “highest levels of journalistic excellence” in their reporting.[3]

In 2015, Williams recanted and apologized for telling an inaccurate story on the Nightly News about personal experiences on board a military helicopter during the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.[4] Williams was widely criticized and on February 10, 2015, NBC News president Deborah Turness announced he would be suspended for six months without pay.[5]

Early life

Born in Elmira, New York, Williams was reared in a well-to-do Irish Catholic home.[6] He is the son of Dorothy May (née Pampel) and Gordon Lewis Williams, who was an executive vice president of the National Retail Merchants Association, in New York.[7][8] He is the youngest of four siblings.[9] He lived in Elmira for ten years before moving toMiddletown, New Jersey, when he was in junior high school.[10]

Early broadcast career

Williams first worked in broadcasting in 1981 at KOAM-TV in Pittsburg, Kansas. The following year he covered news in the Washington, D.C. area at TV station WTTG, then worked in Philadelphia for WCAU, then a CBS affiliate.[16] Beginning in 1987 he broadcast in New York City at WCBS. Williams joined NBC News in 1993, where he anchored the national Weekend Nightly News and was chief White House correspondent before serving as anchor and managing editor of The News With Brian Williams, broadcast on MSNBC and CNBC.[17]

Nightly News

Williams became anchor of NBC Nightly News on December 2, 2004, and his first year in that post was marked by coverage of two disasters: the Asian tsunami andHurricane Katrina. His and NBC’s Katrina coverage was widely praised, and Williams in particular was applauded “for venting his anger and frustration over the government’s failure to act quickly to help the victims.”[18] NBC News was awarded a Peabody Award for its coverage, the Peabody committee concluding that the staff of NBC Nightly News “exemplified the highest levels of journalistic excellence in reporting on Hurricane Katrina.”[3]NBC Nightly News also earned the George Polk Award[19] and the duPont-Columbia University Award for its Katrina coverage.[20]

Since he began anchoring the ‘’Nightly News’’, Williams has received 12 News & Documentary Emmy Awards. For “outstanding” work as anchor and managing editor of the ‘’Nightly News’, he received one Emmy in 2006 (for ‘’Nightly News’’ coverage of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina),[22] two in 2007,[23] one in 2009,[24] two in 2010,[25] one in 2011,[26] one in 2013,[27] and one in 2014.[28] He also received a 2012 Emmy for his interview program ‘’Rock Center’’,[29] a 2013 Emmy for being one of the executive producers and editors of a documentary on the JFK Presidential Library & Museum,[27] and also shared a 2014 Emmy awarded for an NBC News Special on the Boston Marathon bombings.[28]

Based on the Nielsen ratings, from late 2008 Williams’ news broadcast consistently won more viewers than its two main rivals, ABC‘s World News Tonight and CBSEvening News.[30] In fact, from late 2008 to late 2014, NBC Nightly News beat the other two network programs in the Nielsen ratings all but one week.[30]

NBC pays him $10 million per year.[31] His recent scandal for inaccurate reporting will cost him $5 million in lost income according to CBS.[32]

Inaccurate Iraq war recollections

In February 2015 Williams recanted a story he had told about being aboard a helicopter hit by RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) fire and forced to land on March 24, 2003, during the U.S. invasion of Iraq.[33] His initial and subsequent reportings of the incident indicated that a helicopter in front of his was hit by the RPG. However, in a 2013 interview[34] and during the NBC Nightly News broadcast on January 30, 2015 Williams inaccurately recounted the incident, stating that it was the helicopter he was on that was “hit and crippled by enemy fire”.[35] His story was soon criticized by Lance Reynolds, a flight engineer who was on board one of the three helicopters that had been attacked.[36] Reynolds and other crew members said they were forced to make an emergency landing, and that it was a half hour to an hour later that Williams’ Chinook helicopter arrived on the scene.[33][37] Williams’ retelling of the helicopter incident in 2007 also differs from the recollections of on-site military personnel.[38] Williams said in the interview, “… I looked down the tube of an RPG that had been fired at us, and it hit the chopper in front of us.”[38]The statement varies with the recollections of crew on the helicopter that sustained RPG damage, that it was at least a half hour ahead of Williams’ craft, making it impossible for him to “look down the tube” of the RPG that damaged the other helicopter.[38]

On the February 4 broadcast of Nightly News, Williams apologized and said he had “made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago.”[39] NBC News President Deborah Turness announced on February 6 that there would be an internal probe into Williams’ Iraq reporting.[40] The next day Williams announced that he would step aside from anchoring the Nightly News broadcast for “several days” to remove a distraction during an NBC investigation of his actions.[41] The New York Times reported that Williams’ credibility dropped after he acknowledged the false recollections.[42]

On February 10, 2015, NBC News president Deborah Turness announced Williams’ suspension from NBC for six months without pay.[5]NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke stated that Williams’ actions were inexcusable and the suspension “severe and appropriate,” but that Williams also “deserves a second chance” to win back trust.[5]

Hurricane Katrina reporting questioned

Williams’ comments made in a 2006 interview concerning Hurricane Katrina have received critical scrutiny.[43][44] Williams said he stayed at a French Quarter hotel, the Ritz-Carlton on Canal Street, according to an ‘’NBC’’ source.[40] Williams said he looked out his hotel window and saw a dead body floating by face down.[40][43][44] The hotel manager at the time has said neither she nor her staff saw any floating bodies, though such bodies were seen elsewhere on Canal Street.[40][43][44][45] The French Quarter in fact received little flooding, but a New Orleans geographer states that Canal Street in front of the hotel was flooded.[46] AnAssociated Press news photographer also reported that flood waters in front of the Ritz could accommodate a flat-bottomed boat and that he photographed, a few blocks from the hotel, a dead body floating on Canal Street.[40]

Williams also said that he accidentally ingested flood water and came down with dysentery.[43][44] A 2005 study of the Katrina disaster by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that there were documented reports of “clusters of diarrheal disease” among those in evacuation centers, but no cases of dysentery.[47] Shortly after the storm a hotel guest said doctors at a makeshift clinic had treated what they believed was dysentery.[47][48]

According to a CNN news report, Williams also referred inconsistently to a suicide that took place inside the New Orleans Superdome at the time of Katrina.[49] It reported that in a 2005 television documentary Williams indicated he was not a witness to the suicide, stating, “We heard the story of a man killing himself, falling from the upper deck.”[49] In a 2014 interview Williams said, “We watched, all of us watched, as one man committed suicide.”[49]

Critics have also been skeptical about a 2014 Williams statement that the Ritz-Carlton was “overrun with gangs” when he stayed there.[50] Also, based on interviews conducted with Williams and other NBC News employees, Douglas Brinkley wrote that “armed gangs” broke into the hotel, “brandishing guns and terrorizing guests.”[51] Richard Rhodes, a Seattle business executive staying at the Ritz-Carlton at about the same time as Williams, said he saw no “criminal gangs” there but that “a kind of criminal element” had gotten inside. He said that “two off-duty police officers were running around keeping the peace,” and that there were “scary moments” during his time at the hotel.[52] News reports at that time described the area around the hotel as unsafe. In a September 2, 2005 report, CNN paraphrased a hotel guest about the security there as follows: “Off-duty police officers were guarding the hotel with shotguns to protect [guests] from bands of looters outside, she said.” An August 30, 2005 USA Today report describes looters ransacking jewelry and clothing stores on Canal Street near the Ritz-Carlton.[53]In addition, the city’s director of homeland security described some of the looting in the city as being done by “large groups of armed individuals.”[54] In contrast, on September 26, 2005 the New Orleans Time-Picayune reported that Katrina-related violence in the city had been overblown, and provided a representative anecdote involving the Ritz-Carlton.[55] New Orleans Police Chief Eddie Compass, whose daughter stayed at the hotel during the storm, had heard from “civilians” that “a band of armed thugs had gotten into the Ritz-Carlton hotel and started raping women,” including his daughter. Compass rushed to the Ritz, “only to find that although a group of men had tried to enter the hotel, they weren’t armed and were easily turned back by police.”[55]

NBC cancelled Rock Center on May 10, 2013, after low ratings and having trouble finding a permanent time slot for the program. The last show aired on June 21, 2013.[58] Williams reportedly felt “insulted” by the program’s cancellation.[59]

Other programs

Williams frequently appears on The Daily Show as a celebrity guest interviewed by Jon Stewart. He appeared on the Weekend Update segment of Saturday Night Live on the season 32 premiere hosted by Dane Cook before hosting a season 33 episode on November 3, 2007, the last episode to air before the show went on a three-month hiatus due to the 2007-08 Writers’ Guild strike. With this episode, Williams is now the first and (so far) only network news anchor to host SNL.[60]

On February 22, 2010, while providing coverage of the Winter Olympics, Williams did a skit with Brian Williams, the Canadian sportscaster of CTV‘s on the CTV Olympic set.[61][62] Some in the media dubbed this the new “Battle of the Brians,” as NBC’s Williams compared his own modest set to CTV’s expensive Olympic studio.[63]

Williams regularly appears on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, where he slow jams the news of the previous week as Fallon sings and reiterates what Williams says, with The Roots providing the musical backing. A mash-up video created by Fallon, where he appears to rap to hip-hop instrumentals, became viral within a few hours.[64] He has also made numerous appearances on Late Show with David Letterman despite it being on CBS, a competing network. During an appearance on July 26, 2011, Williams demonstrated a skilled vocal impersonation of TV personality Regis Philbin. Williams has also appeared on Late Night with Conan O’Brienwhere he took part in numerous skits and interviews.

“

… And then I pull off my mask, and I’m alizard person, too. Blackout. End of episode.

Williams also frequently made guest appearances on NBC’s television comedy 30 Rock as a caricatured version of himself. In the episode “The Ones“, he’s seen at home receiving proposition calls meant for Tracy Jordan. In “Audition Day“, he auditions to be a new TGS cast member. He also is seen once on the show taunting Tina Fey’s character Liz Lemon. In April 2012, on the West Coast installment of the 30 Rock season 6 live show, Williams portrayed a news anchor covering the Apollo 13 story.

Williams appeared on Sesame Street in a 2007 episode, announcing the word of the day, squid, in a special broadcast. Williams appeared on Sesame Street again in a 2008 episode reporting for Sesame Street Nightly News about the Mine-itis outbreak where he becomes a victim of it. He also was the host of the 2009 Annual Sesame Workshop Benefit Gala.

He was the commencement speaker for Elon University‘s graduating class of 2013 of which his son Douglas was a member.

Personal life

Williams married his wife, Jane Gillan Williams (née Stoddard) at the First Presbyterian Church of New Canaan, Connecticut on June 7, 1986.[66] He currently lives in New Canaan, Connecticut with his wife.[67] His daughter Allison is an actress who currently stars in HBO‘s Girls. He received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Bates College in 2005.[68]

Jump up^Strauss, Robert. “IN PERSON; The Life Of Brian, Annotated”, The New York Times, October 27, 2002. Retrieved June 13, 2011: “Mr. Williams grew up in Mom-apple-pie-and-TV-trays style in Middletown, Monmouth County, a town of true middle class…. Mr. Williams, who was in junior high when the family moved there from Elmira, N.Y., was an average student who had his eyes on fast cars, fun summer jobs and hanging out at the local fire station, where he became a volunteer firefighter.”

Jump up^“Brian Williams”. NOPAC Talent. Retrieved October 14, 2007. Graduated from Mater Dei, a Roman Catholic High School in New Monmouth, NJ.

Community Reacts To NYPD Officers Shot While On Duty

48 Black Guerilla Family gang members indicted

Black Guerrilla Family

Experts testify Black Guerilla Family ordered hit

Communists on Campus: The Weather Underground

The Weather Underground Organization (WUO), commonly known as the Weather Underground, was an American radical left organization founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. Originally called Weatherman, the group became known colloquially as the Weathermen. Weatherman first organized in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) composed for the most part of the national office leadership of SDS and their supporters. Their goal was to create a clandestine revolutionary party for the overthrow of the US government.

With revolutionary positions characterized by Black liberation rhetoric,[2] the group conducted a campaign of bombings through the mid-1970s, including aiding the jailbreak and escape of Timothy Leary. The “Days of Rage”, their first public demonstration on October 8, 1969, was a riot in Chicago timed to coincide with the trial of the Chicago Seven. In 1970 the group issued a “Declaration of a State of War” against the United States government, under the name “Weather Underground Organization” (WUO).[4]

The bombing attacks mostly targeted government buildings, along with several banks. Most were preceded by evacuation warnings, along with communiqués identifying the particular matter that the attack was intended to protest. No persons were killed in any of their acts of property destruction, although three members of the group were killed in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion. For the bombing of the United States Capitol on March 1, 1971, they issued a communiqué saying it was “in protest of the U.S. invasion of Laos”. For the bombing of the Pentagon on May 19, 1972, they stated it was “in retaliation for the U.S. bombing raid in Hanoi”. For the January 29, 1975 bombing of the United States Department of State building, they stated it was “in response to escalation in Vietnam”.[4]

The Weathermen grew out of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) faction of SDS. It took its name from the lyric “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”, from the Bob Dylan song “Subterranean Homesick Blues”. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows was the title of a position paper they distributed at an SDS convention in Chicago on June 18, 1969. This founding document called for a “white fighting force” to be allied with the “Black Liberation Movement” and other radical movements[5] to achieve “the destruction of US imperialism and achieve a classless world: world communism”.[6]

The Weathermen disintegrated after the United States reached a peace accord in Vietnam in 1973, after which the New Left declined.

Larry Grathwohl on Ayers’ plan for American re-education camps and the need to kill millions

NY Police Executions by Muslim Terrorist! Christian Video Channel

Has Race War Begun with The Execution of 2 NYPD Officers?

Earlier reports stated members were “preparing to shoot on duty police officers”

by KURT NIMMO | INFOWARS.COM |

The suspected shooter, Ismaaiyl Abdulah Brinsley, is said to have killed the police officers in retaliation for the death of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

On Saturday evening the New York Daily News reported Brinsley, who reportedly committed suicide after the execution, is suspected of being involved with the Black Guerrilla Family prison gang.

In early December Sergeants Benevolent Association President Ed Mullins said Black Guerrilla Family members were “preparing to shoot on duty police officers.”

The Black Guerrilla Family, also known as the Black Family or the Black Vanguard, was founded by George Jackson in 1966.

Jackson, a criminal serving time at San Quentin in California for armed robbery, became a Marxist and Maoist while in prison. He was killed in 1971 during an escape attempt three days before he was scheduled to go on trial for allegedly killing a prison guard. The authorities continually changed their story about a gun they said Jackson had in his possession.

The Black Guerrilla Family was said to be associated with the Black Liberation Army, Symbionese Liberation Army, the Weather Underground, and other leftist groups.

The Black Liberation Army was infiltrated by the FBI and two members of the Symbionese Liberation Army,William and Emily Harris, are suspected government operatives. The the Weather Underground was also compromised by the FBI, as an informant, the late Larry Grathwohl, admitted in his 1976 book, “Bringing Down America.”

In 1989 a Black Liberation Army member fatally shot and killed Huey P. Newton, the co-founder and leader of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.

NEW YORK POLICE OFFICERS SHOT DEAD IN SQUAD CAR ‘ASSASSINATION’

“It’s difficult to find the words,” New York City Police Commissioner William J. Bratton said Saturday night.

Without provocation, an attacker ambushed officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos while they sat in their marked patrol car in the Bedford-Stuyvesant Area of Brooklyn at 2:47 in the afternoon. “They were quite simply assassinated,” Bratton said, “targeted for their uniform.”

While Liu and Ramos sat in full uniform in a Critical Response Vehicle in the 84th precinct, a man approached the passenger door, assumed a “shooting stance,” and fired several times through the window. Both officers were struck in the head and died from their wounds.

The Commissioner said that the officers had no warning and may not have had the opportunity to see the assailant, much less reach for their weapons. The attack was entirely unprovoked.

The suspected murderer is 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley. Though Brinsley’s last known residence was in Georgia, according to reports, he was in Baltimore earlier in the day.

After the shooting, Brinsley ran from the scene and turned into a G-train subway station, where he descended to the platform. He was pursued by other officers. When he reached the platform, Brinsley shot himself in the head, taking his own life.

At approximately 5:45 AM Saturday morning, according to Bratton, Brinsley shot his former girlfriend in the stomach.

At 2:45 PM, a warning was sent from Baltimore to the New York Police Department and other agencies, moments before Liu and Ramos were murdered.

A visibly shaken Bratton noted that authorities are investigating social media posts that suggest Brinsley had planned to kill police officers to avenge the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Garner died while in a chokehold in New York City and Brown was shot dead by a St. Louis police officer. After grand juries decided not to indict the police officers involved, protests broke out and have continued to this day.

“It’s clear that this was an assassination; the officers were shot execution style,” Bill de Blasio told the media. The NYC Mayor went on to describe the ambush as an assault on all New Yorkers and civil society in general: “Our entire city was attacked.”

De Blasio and Bratton called for any information about this attack or any other like it that may occur in the future. Both men, overcome by emotion, expressed fear that this incident may not be isolated.

Bratton, calling for vigilance, emphasized that the police officers in the NYPD were warned in this instance, but it was too late.

Officer Liu, 32-years-old, had served on the force for two years and was married just two months ago. Bratton said that he spoke with the fallen policeman’s new bride before addressing the press.

Ramos, who turned 40-years-old on December 12, “achieved his dream” of becoming a New York police officer three years prior. He is survived by his wife and 13-year-old son, who “couldn’t comprehend what happened to his father,” according the Commissioner.

This is “not a time for politics or political analysis,” said the New York City Mayor, before concluding his remarks by requesting prayers for the families, for the NYPD, and for the city of New York.

Alexander Marlow contributed to this report.

***

NEW YORK (AP) — A gunman who announced online that he was planning to shoot two “pigs” in retaliation for the chokehold death of Eric Garner ambushed two police officers in a patrol car and shot them to death in broad daylight Saturday before running to a subway station and killing himself, authorities said.

The suspect, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, wrote on an Instagram account: “I’m putting wings on pigs today. They take 1 of ours, let’s take 2 of theirs,” officials said. He used the hashtags Shootthepolice RIPErivGardner (sic) RIPMikeBrown.

Police said he approached the passenger window of a marked police car and opened fire, striking Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in the head. The officers were on special patrol in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.

“They were, quite simply, assassinated — targeted for their uniform. … They were ambushed and murdered,” said Police Commissioner William Bratton, who looked pale and shaken at a hospital news conference.

Brinsley took off running and went down to a nearby subway station, where he shot himself. A silver handgun was recovered at the scene.

“This may be my final post,” he wrote in the Instagram post that included an image of a silver handgun.

Bratton confirmed that Brinsley made very serious “anti-cop” statements online but did not get into specifics of the posts. He said they were looking at whether the suspect had attended any rallies or demonstrations. Two city officials with direct knowledge of the case confirmed the posts to The Associated Press. The officials, a senior city official and a law enforcement official, were not authorized to speak publicly on the topic and spoke on condition of anonymity,

The Rev. Al Sharpton said the family of Garner, killed by a police chokehold this year, had no connection to the suspect and denounced the violence.

“Any use of the names of Eric Garner and Michael Brown in connection with any violence or killing of police, is reprehensible and against the pursuit of justice in both cases,” Sharpton said. “We have stressed at every rally and march that anyone engaged in any violence is an enemy to the pursuit of justice for Eric Garner and Michael Brown.”

The shootings come at a tense time. Police in New York are being criticized for their tactics following the death of Garner, who was stopped by police on suspicion of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes. Amateur video captured an officer wrapping his arm around Garner’s neck and wrestling him to the ground. Garner was heard gasping, “I can’t breathe” before he lost consciousness and later died.

“Our city is in mourning. Our hearts are heavy,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio, who spoke softly with moist eyes. “It is an attack on all of us.”

Demonstrators around the country have staged die-ins and other protests since a grand jury decided Dec. 3 not to indict the officer in Garner’s death, a decision that closely followed a Missouri grand jury’s refusal to indict a white officer in the fatal shooting of Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old.

In a statement Saturday night, Attorney General Eric Holder condemned the shooting deaths as senseless and “an unspeakable act of barbarism.”

Earlier Saturday, Bratton said, Brinsley went to the home of a former girlfriend in the Baltimore area and shot and wounded her. Police there said they noticed Brinsley posting to the woman’s Instagram account about a threat to New York officers. Baltimore-area officials sent a warning flier to New York City police, who received it around the time of the shooting, Bratton said.

A block from the shooting site, a line of about eight police officers stood with a German shepherd blocking the taped-off street. Streets were blocked off even to pedestrians.

The president of the police officers union, Patrick Lynch, and Blasio have been locked in a public battle over treatment of officers following the grand jury’s decision. Just days ago, Lynch suggested police officers sign a petition that demanded the mayor not attend their funerals should they die on the job.

The last shooting death of an NYPD officer came in December 2011, when 22-year veteran Peter Figoski responded to a report of a break-in at a Brooklyn apartment. He was shot in the face and killed by one of the suspects hiding in a side room when officers arrived. The triggerman, Lamont Pride, was convicted of murder and sentenced in 2013 to 45 years to life in prison.

Obama’s ‘propaganda’ pushed people to ‘hate the police,’ Giuliani says

President Obama has engaged in “propaganda” encouraging people to “hate the police,” former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) charged a day after two city police officers were shot and killed in their patrol car by a man who posted anti-police messages to his social media account.

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“We’ve had four months of propaganda starting with the president that everybody should hate the police,” Giuliani said during an appearance on Fox News early Sunday. “The protests are being embraced, the protests are being encouraged. The protests, even the ones that don’t lead to violence, a lot of them lead to violence, all of them lead to a conclusion: The police are bad, the police are racist. That is completely wrong.”
Giuliani said he did not agree with statements like those from Pat Lynch, the president of the largest police union in New York City, who said the current mayor, Bill de Blasio (D), had blood on his hands.

“I think it goes too far to blame the mayor for the murder or to ask for the mayor’s resignation,” Giuliani said.

“I feel bad for the mayor,” Giuliani continued. “He must be heartbroken over the loss of two police officers. I can’t believe this is what he wanted. I don’t think he’s a bad man in any way.”

But, Giuliani said, de Blasio is “pursuing the wrong policies” and should not have given protesters demonstrating against the police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown as much leeway.

“I don’t think it goes too far to say the mayor did not properly police the protests,” Giuliani said. “He allowed the protesters to take over the streets. He allowed them to hurt police officers, to commit crimes, and he didn’t arrest them. And when you do that, similar to what happened in Crown Heights, you create a great riot. He should have known better. For that he has to take accountability.”

In a statement Saturday, the president said he “unconditionally” condemned the attack on the police officers and called for the nation to “turn to words that heal.”

“Two brave men won’t be going home to their loved ones tonight, and for that, there is no justification,” the president, vacationing in Hawaii, said in a statement. “The officers who serve and protect our communities risk their own safety for ours every single day — and they deserve our respect and gratitude every single day.”

The heinous murders of two NYPD police officers were at the hands of thug who’s record is longer than a roll of toilet paper. Ismaaiyl was no stranger to the law, and had many felony charges including ones involving firearms.

The rhetoric that President Obama and all the race baiters continue to push have directly caused this unstable person to snap. For weeks protesters have been calling on the deaths of police officers as seen here in this video. “What do we want? DEAD COPS!”

“This Country Values Property Over People”: Ferguson Activist Speaks Out as Protests Spread

Riot as the Language of the Unheard: Ferguson Protests Set to Continue In Fight For Racial Justice

Here are documents and evidence presented to the grand jury in Clayton, Mo., that was deciding whether to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the August shooting of Michael Brown. The documents were released by the St. Louis County prosecutor, Robert P. McCulloch. Note: Some of the documents contain graphic language. NOV. 25, 2014 RELATED ARTICLE

The most credible eyewitnesses to the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., said he had charged toward Police Officer Darren Wilson just before the final, fatal shots, the St. Louis County prosecutor said Monday night as he sought to explain why a grand jury had not found probable cause to indict the officer.

The accounts of several other witnesses from the Ferguson neighborhood where Mr. Brown, 18 and unarmed, met his death on Aug. 9 — including those who said Mr. Brown was trying to surrender — changed over time or were inconsistent with physical evidence, the prosecutor, Robert P. McCulloch, said in a news conference.

“The duty of the grand jury is to separate fact and fiction,” he said in a statement watched by a tense nation. “No probable cause exists to file any charges against Darren Wilson.”

Mr. McCulloch praised the grand jurors, who met on 25 days over a three-month period and heard 60 witnesses, for pouring “their hearts and souls into this process” and said that only by hearing all the evidence, as they had, could one fairly judge the case.

The task facing the St. Louis County grand jury was not to determine whether Officer Darren Wilson was guilty of a crime, but whether there was evidence to justify bringing charges, which could have ranged from negligent manslaughter to intentional murder.

The fact that at least nine members of the 12-member panel could not agree to indict the officer indicates that they accepted the narrative of self-defense put forth by Officer Wilson in his voluntary, four hours of testimony before the grand jury. Mr. McCulloch, in his summary of the months of testimony, said it was supported by the most reliable eyewitness accounts — from African-Americans in the vicinity of the shooting — as well as physical evidence and the consistent results of three autopsies.

At this point it looked like he was almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I’m shooting at him.

And the face that he had was looking straight through me, like I wasn’t even there, I wasn’t even anything in his way.

View annotated transcript of Officer Wilson’s Testimony »

At issue, under the Missouri law governing use of deadly force by law enforcement as well as general rules for self-defense, was if Officer Wilson “reasonably believed” that he or others were in serious danger.

According to transcripts released Monday night, Officer Wilson testified that after he encountered Mr. Brown and a friend walking in the street, he realized the pair might be those being sought for stealing cigarillos from a convenience store minutes earlier.

GRAPHIC

What Happened in Ferguson?

Here’s what you need to know about the situation in Missouri, including information about how the grand jury made its decision.

OPEN GRAPHIC

According to witnesses and blood and other evidence found inside the car, Officer Wilson first fired two shots while he struggled with Mr. Brown through the window of his patrol vehicle, a Chevrolet Tahoe, grazing Mr. Brown’s hand.

Mr. Brown started to run away, with Officer Wilson in chase, then stopped and turned. According to the prosecutor’s summary, the officer fired five shots as Mr. Brown charged him, then another five shots as he made what one witness called a “full charge.”

Only 90 seconds passed between Officer Wilson’s first encounter with the youths and the arrival of a backup police car, just after the shooting stopped, the prosecutor said.

Probable cause is not a stiff standard. It does not require that most of the evidence be incriminating, let alone be proof “beyond a reasonable doubt,” as required in a criminal trial. Instead, grand juries are ordinarily instructed to issue an indictment when there is “some evidence” of guilt, legal experts said.

To Mr. Brown’s parents and their supporters, the case for bringing at least some charge in this case seemed open and shut. But the jurors also had to consider whether Officer Wilson acted within the limits of the lethal-force law, raising the threshold for an indictment.

Independent legal experts said it was impossible to analyze the grand jury decision without studying the transcripts of the testimony as well as the police reports, autopsies and forensic evidence that might shed light on what Mr. Brown was doing in his final seconds: whether he was menacing the officer or, as a friend who was with him said, trying to surrender.

Some people claiming to be eyewitnesses said Mr. Brown was shot in the back, Mr. McCulloch said, but later changed their stories when autopsies found no injuries entering his back. But others, African-Americans who did not speak out publicly, he said, consistently said that the youth had menaced the officer.

Mr. McCulloch, had promised that he would allay any suspicions about the fairness of the proceedings by releasing, with names redacted, transcripts of testimony and other evidence heard by the panel.

The release of grand jury information, secret by law, is rare, and Mr. McCulloch originally said he would first seek a judge’s permission. But on Monday, his office said it had determined that it had a right to release most of the transcripts and it did so Monday night.

The grand jury, which included three African-Americans, deliberated for two days. By law, the final vote on whether to bring an indictment is secret and the jurors are legally prohibited from discussing their deliberations.

The United States Department of Justice is conducting a separate investigation of whether Officer Wilson, who is white, intentionally acted to deprive Mr. Brown, an African-American, of his civil rights. But the bar for such cases is a high one, and officials have privately said they are unlikely to bring federal charges. The Justice Department is also conducting a broader investigation into the practices of the Ferguson Police Department.

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Protesters Turn Out in U.S. Cities Following Ferguson Decision

Rallies Largely Peaceful, Though Some Vandalism Occurred in at Least One City

By

THOMAS MACMILLAN,

ALEJANDRO LAZO and

CAMERON MCWHIRTER

Protests broke out in a number of U.S. cities following the decision on Monday by a grand jury not to indict a Ferguson, Mo., police officer in the shooting death of a black teenager.

Marches and rallies had been planned in many of the nation’s largest cities, from New York to Chicago to Houston, regardless of the jury’s finding.

In New York, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Union Square in Manhattan. When the grand jury decision was announced, word quickly spread through the crowd. In a few minutes, most were holding one fist up in the air as they observed a moment of silence that lasted nearly five minutes.

The only audible sound was the shutter of press cameras. Some demonstrators were in tears.

WSJ’s Ben Kesling reports from the scene in Ferguson, Mo., after a grand jury declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting of Michael Brown Photo: Getty Images

Then, with the cooperation of New York Police Department officers, the protesters began a spontaneous march, moving north along Sixth Avenue, blocking traffic. Protesters occupied several blocks as they marched toward Times Square.

“I feel like I don’t have an outlet for my anger,” said Monica Thompson, 29 years old, a social worker who lives in Harlem. “There’s not been an indictment. There’s an acceptance that black and brown lives don’t matter.”

A police helicopter hovered overhead as protesters marched and a large police presence accompanied the protest. No arrests were reported as of 10:30 p.m.

A sense of anger pulsed through the crowd. “They don’t know what they just started,” said Precious Etsekhume, 22, referring to the government and police. “They are going to regret every bad decision they made.”

At a New York news conference, the Rev. Al Sharpton , who has worked to bring attention to the case since Ferguson officer Darren Wilson shot unarmed teenager Michael Brown, called for a federal investigation into the shooting, saying he had no confidence in local prosecutors.

Mr. Sharpton said the grand jury’s decision was expected but was “still an absolute blow to those of us that wanted to see a fair and open trial.”

Mr. Sharpton appeared with the family of Eric Garner, a New York City man whose death was caused by an apparent police chokehold, according to the city’s medical examiner. Mr. Garner’s family didn’t speak.

In Oakland, Calif. police and protesters clashed violently after groups of protesters blocked a major Bay Area freeway for hours, set piles of trash ablaze on city streets and looted retail shops in the city’s downtown area.

WSJ’s Ben Kesling reports from Ferguson, Mo., on the growing protests after a grand jury declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting of Michael Brown. Photo: AP

After marching relatively peacefully for more than an hour, the crowd gathered near City Hall grew to stretch more than two city blocks, and became increasingly unruly, vandalizing buildings and smashing windows of a Chase Bank branch as they marched through downtown and then through the city’s increasingly gentrifying Lake Merritt neighborhood.

About 500 protesters ran up a freeway on ramp near a Trader Joe’s grocery store, the Oakland Police Department said, bringing traffic to a halt for hours on Interstate 580. Several arrests were made, Oakland police said, and the freeway was eventually reopened.

But clashes continued both near the freeway and in the city’s downtown, where the protests had originated. By midnight, protesters had ignited large fires on a street in downtown Oakland and looters could be seen breaking into several stores.

Inside a Metro PCS store, one woman tossed packages through a smashed glass door to gathered crowds. Down the street, young men hurled beer bottles at people passing bye.

Close to the city’s police headquarters, protesters confronted officers in full riot gear and gas masks, linking arms and advancing toward the police shortly after midnight. The police, in turn, advanced toward the protesters and some in the crowd threw water bottles and other objects at the officers.

“This is an unlawful assembly,” a policeman announced via a speaker system. “You may be arrested and subject to removal by force if necessary.”

A man in the crowd wearing a sweatshirt and carrying a bullhorn answered back with his own announcement.

“The Oakland Police Department is now under citizen’s arrest,” he said. “By the power invested in the people of California, the Oakland Police Department is now under arrest. We are arresting you for violating our civil rights.”

Clashes continued into the early morning as police steadily moved up the street arresting and confronting protesters.

D’Andre Teeter, 70, from Berkeley, said before the grand jury’s decision was announced that anything less than an indictment for murder would be an “outrage.”

”We are out here to say this has to stop, and we think the whole country must come to a halt regardless of the outcome of the grand jury’s decision,” he said.

Across the bay in San Francisco, a crowd of a few dozen people gathered in the Mission District to await the grand jury decision. Carrying signs reading “Justice 4 Mike Brown,” they booed and chanted, “The people say guilty! The people say guilty!” when the news came that Officer Wilson wouldn’t be indicted.

In downtown Atlanta, a handful of civil-rights activists gathered outside the Richard B. Russell Federal Building to address the media after the verdict was announced. Markel Hutchins, an African American minister, choked back tears at one point when describing how frustrated he was by the decision.

“If you don’t look like Michael Brown, or have a son or grandson or cousin that looks like Michael Brown, you will never understand why we feel the way we feel tonight,” he said.

With unseasonably chilly temperatures that swept into the area Monday night, most of downtown Atlanta was desolate and no major disturbances were reported. Civil-rights leaders said they planned a peaceful protest Tuesday evening.

In Philadelphia, the city’s police department was monitoring the situation and watching social media, said a spokesman for Mayor Michael Nutter. The mayor earlier told reporters he recognizes the public’s right to demonstrate but urged people to do so nonviolently.

According to the Associated Press, several hundred protesters marched through downtown Philadelphia, yelling, “No justice, no peace, no racist police!” A similar protest of about 50 people in Pittsburgh was short-lived, with activists saying they plan to regroup Tuesday at the federal courthouse, the AP reported.

Law-enforcement officials in Los Angeles said they had prepared for potential unrest in the nation’s second-largest city, but a small protest march that started in Leimert Park in south L.A. blocked traffic along its route but otherwise remained peaceful.

As they marched on foot and on bicycles, the few dozen protesters carried signs, blew whistles and shouted: “If you’re sick of the murdering police, outta your house and into the street.” At one point, a few protesters briefly made their way onto a section of the I-10 freeway before police moved them back.

Cue Jnmarie, a 50-year-old pastor, said he met with police twice to prepare for the response to the grand jury’s decision. He said he is pushing for public policy changes, and doesn’t support violence. He said community organizers and religious leaders there aimed to do more than “blow off steam” about Michael Brown’s death.

”This is not just happening now,” he said. “It has been happening, and it’s part of the culture.”

Mr. Jnmarie described himself as a victim of racial profiling in Los Angeles and said the community is angry. “Police protect and serve everyone except people of color,” he said.

”We do everything in our power to facilitate lawful, peaceful demonstrations as long as they don’t become violent or destructive,” said Andy Neiman, spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department.

In Seattle, where a protest march also was reported to be nonviolent, the police department said it hadn’t made any major preparations for protests. The department prefers to take a “rather toned-down approach to that sort of thing,” said Patrick Michaud, a Seattle police detective with the force’s public affairs unit.

In Baltimore, two groups said they would wait until Tuesday afternoon to march through downtown, regardless of the grand jury’s decision. “We want the time to have the largest gathering possible,” said Sharon Black, local representative of one of the groups, the Peoples Power Assembly. “It’s difficult to get a large, large group out in the middle of the night. We want our message to be heard.”

Ferguson and Other Cities React to Grand Jury Decision Not to Indict Darren Wilson

Journalists with The New York Times in Ferguson, Mo., are following a grand jury’s decision not to indict Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. On Monday night, the scene in downtown Ferguson grew increasingly unruly as the night wore on with the police using tear gas to disperse crowds who were throwing rocks and shattering store windows. Some businesses were looted, the police said. Protests also broke out in other cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Oakland and Seattle.

A photograph of Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson presented as evidence to the grand jury.Credit via St. Louis County Prosecutor’s Office

Among the many things found in Darren Wilson’s grand jury testimony are several references to the way he felt intimidated by Michael Brown. Though Officer Wilson is himself a large man – nearly 6’4″, around 210 pounds, according to his own testimony — he repeatedly described Mr. Brown as aggressive, big, and threatening, often in vivid language. Here are a few excerpts from his description of the altercation at the window of his patrol car:

“I tried to hold his right arm and use my left hand to get out to have some kind of control and not be trapped in my car any more. And when I grabbed him, the only way I can describe it is I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan.”

“I felt that another one of those punches in my face could knock me out or worse. I mean it was, he’s obviously bigger than I was and stronger and the, I’ve already taken two to the face and I didn’t think I would, the third one could be fatal if he hit me right.”

“After seeing the blood on my hand, I looked at him and was, this is my car door, he was here and he kind of stepped back and went like this. And then after he did that, he looked up at me and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that’s how angry he looked. He comes back towards me again with his hands up.”

A police officer from the nearby suburb of University City was shot overnight, but it was unclear if it was related to the grand jury’s decision in the Ferguson case, the St. Louis County police said early Tuesday.
The officer was shot in the arm was expected to be “okay,” the police said in a Twitter post. The police were searching for a suspect.

The officer was shot at the intersection of Canton Avenue and Lamb Avenue in University City, a police spokesman said.

There were numerous stretches of Ferguson late Monday night where all was calm, all was well. Stores with “I Love Ferguson” signs in the windows. The red bows and holiday lights wrapped around the light poles downtown still perfectly intact.

But there were pockets that felt like a city under siege.

A Little Caesars Pizza shop was in flames. There were shattered windows at El Palenque Mexican restaurant, and at a UMB Bank branch. Thick smoke poured from the busted front entrance of a Walgreens pharmacy. Men stepped in but quickly stepped out, complaining that it was too hard to see anything because of the smoke. The sound of gunfire occasionally rang out in the distance, and the acidic smell and aftertaste of tear gas filled the air. One man exited the store and jokingly asked if anyone wanted cigarettes.

At the intersection of North Florissant Road and Hereford Avenue – “Ferguson, a city since 1894,” reads the sign at the corner – firefighters worked on putting out the Little Caesars blaze, but there were no police or fire officials at Walgreens. The fire inside continued to burn. Spectators drove up to the store, as did news crews. All the while, the pharmacy’s high-pitched security bell echoed, the soundtrack of the evening’s drama.

“Not often you get to see anarchy, huh?” one man taking pictures outside Walgreens said.

Protesters in Oakland blocked a highway on Monday night in response to the grand jury’s decision in Ferguson, Mo.Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

In Oakland, Calif., protesters blocked a portion of Interstate 580, forcing cars to stop. One man said he had been sitting in his car for about 45 minutes. “I knew there would be protests, but I didn’t think it would get this hectic with shutting down the freeway and all the cops,” said the man, Alex Perez, 28, of Oakland. He was trying to get home, but said he was sympathetic to what the protesters were trying to do. “It was unwarranted for a kid to get shot.”

Inbound flights to Lambert-St. Louis International Airport were not being permitted to land late Monday as a safety precaution, officials said. The Federal Aviation Administration issued a temporary flight restriction, or TFR, affecting inbound flights, the airport said in a post on Twitter.

Late on Monday night, a crowd of about 200 people had blocked traffic on Crenshaw Boulevard, a main thoroughfare through South Los Angeles. The crowd swelled to over 250 as it marched north, then turned east on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, a central strip that cuts through South Los Angeles toward downtown Los Angeles.

Beating drums, the crowd chanted: “Turn up, turn down, we do this for Mike Brown.”

The crowd was young, mostly in their 20s and 30s. Police squad cars and officers stood by at a few intersections. Some protesters carried their cellphones, recording officers or photographing the scene. Helicopters hovered overhead.

John K. Givens, 45, a Los Angeles resident who works at a freight trading company, marched with the crowd, wearing a gray Dodgers cap and a navy blue vest jacket. “I was emotionally bothered by the decision,” Mr. Givens said of the grand jury in the Ferguson, Mo., case.

Mr. Givens said that as a black male, violent interactions were to be expected. His younger brother, Mr. Givens said, had been beaten by a Los Angeles police officer. “It’s nothing new,” he said. “This is the one that got the most media attention.”

Monday night’s grand jury decision to not indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson over the fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, led to riots in the Missouri city.

Although Michael Brown’s family, President Barack Obama, and authorities called for peaceful protests, the Ferguson was soon out of control.

The riots saw a return to the looting, fires and property damages which took place on a smaller scale in August, immediately after the shooting of Brown.

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Damage done: Two buildings still smoulder after the riots that ravaged Ferguson, Missouri overnight

Before: A satellite image taken by Google in September 2012 show the buildings intact

As the sun rose on Tuesday, the cityscape of Ferguson looked worlds away from satellite and Google Street View snaps taken just months earlier.

Pictures from yesterday in comparison with images from before, tracked down byThe Wall Street Journal, show the damage done.

Last night, tens of thousands of people in more than 170 cities across America – including Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, among others – were demonstrating against the long-awaited verdict.

However, despite the St. Louis grand jury decision, federal investigations into the shooting of Michael Brown continue the US Attorney General said on Monday.

The Justice Department will continue to pursue two investigations, one into potential civil rights violations by Officer Wilson when he shot dead unarmed Brown in August this year, and one into the practices of the Ferguson Police force.

Damaged buildings in Ferguson following night of protests

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Beauty lost: A beauty supply store has been left in ruins after Monday night’s riots

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True beauty: A Google Street View snap from 2010 shows the shop in its original state

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Burned out: A building in Ferguson only has its four walls left after being destroyed by fire

Better times: The building, which appears to be a shop, is pictured on Google earlier this year

The fire at the local Little Ceasars restaurant left the big orange sign in a melted lump on the ground

Neighborhood joint: There is no sign of its former glory, captured by Google in August 2012

Distraught: The manager of the Little Caesar’s said he understood the protesters were angry but added: ‘Speaking your mind – that’s America. You are supposed to be able to protest peacefully and make your point. But this…’

More destruction: The arson frenzy also hit South Florissant Street, about a mile away. This branch of Little Casear’s was burned out

Et tu: The neighboring antique shop to the Little Caesar’s was also destroyed in the orgy of violence which hit Ferguson

Long way back: A woman stops to take a picture using her phone of the damage done

Still intact: The local Clean World Laundromat was still standing on Monday morning

Residents on the streets told MailOnline that the wreckage to Ferguson was so bad that it looked like ‘Ferganistan’.

Another said that it ‘looked like Iraq’.

Almost every building along South Florissant Street, where the Ferguson police station is located, had been ransacked or vandalised.

Tony Koenig and his brother Ray, 38 and 40, had taken the day off from working as school groundskeepers to help rebuild a Mexican restaurant run by a friend.

Tony said: ‘I have lived in Ferguson for 38 years and I have never seen anything like this. They just want street justice and they don’t care about how they get it.

‘This young generation. I cannot understand why they do what they do. The parents are to blame. When me and my brother grew up both our parents worked and we were raised knowing how to show respect, and that doesn’t happen these days.

‘We’ve had a hard enough time paying our mortgages after the economy went down. We don’t need this’.

Their friend Drew Canaday, who was also helping them, lives in the street next to South Florissant and said that it was ‘like a war’ the night before.

Destruction: :A rioter uses a stick to break a window at the Hunan Chop Suey Chinese Restaurant along West Florissant Ave last night

Nothing left: This was all that was left of the Hunan Chop Suey Chinese restaurant this morning after the fire wrecked it

Picture: ‘I don’t condone this but I can understand it. I have been racially profiled myself,’ said Jason Westbrook of Ferguson as he took video of the burning of the Title Max Loans business on West Florissant

As they were: The Hunan Chop Suey and TitleMax loans were both intact before last night’s orgy of violence

Burning: Cars parked outside one row of shops on West Florissant were targeted in the destruction spree

Burned out: Cars parked outside one row of shops on West Florissant were targeted in the destruction spree

Inspection: The scale of destruction became clear today after a night which saw fires raised across the St Louis suburb of Ferguson

Attacked: McDonald’s on West Florissant was smashed up although not set on fire. It had previously (right) avoided damage

Devastated: A gas station was among the targets of the violence. Today property manager Terri Willits witnessed the destruction

Crime scene: Much of West Florissant was under police guard today and described by officers as an active crime scene

He said: ‘These young people are so used to instant gratification, they want stuff now. They are too immature to understand that stuff takes time.

‘Especially something this big. It takes dialogue and not everyone will be happy but that’s compromise.

‘These people don’t want to wait. That what today’s society has come to, not just here in Ferguson – this is America, this is the world.’

Further up South Florissant a Little Caesar’s pizza restaurant had been burned to the ground, as had the antiques store next to it.

The manager of the restaurant, who declined to give his name for fear of reprisals, said that 12 people had now been put out of work and did not know if the owners would rebuild.

The manager said that the store was destroyed by a tornado three years earlier and they did build it back but it cost ‘a lot of money’.

He said: ‘Most of the people here have families and they are very worried about what will come next for them.

‘I’m proud to work here and started as the dishwasher and worked my way up. I had a motorcycle accident and had my foot amputated and they were good enough to give me a job,

The manger, a widower with two children in their 20s, said that he was in principle on the side of the protesters but that this was ‘too far’.

He said: ‘I believe in their right to protest and what they’re doing is a just case.

‘Speaking your mind – that’s America. You are supposed to be able to protest peacefully and make your point. But this…’

Ferguson: In Defense of Rioting

Darlena Cunha is a Florida-based contributor to The Washington Post and TIME among dozens of other publications.

The violent protests in Ferguson, Mo., are part of the American experience. Peaceful protesting is a luxury only available to those safely in mainstream culture

When a police officer shoots a young, unarmed black man in the streets, then does not face indictment, anger in the community is inevitable. It’s what we do with that anger that counts. In such a case, is rioting so wrong?

Riots are a necessary part of the evolution of society. Unfortunately, we do not live in a universal utopia where people have the basic human rights they deserve simply for existing, and until we get there, the legitimate frustration, sorrow and pain of the marginalized voices will boil over, spilling out into our streets. As “normal” citizens watch the events of Fergusonunfurl on their television screens and Twitter feeds, there is a lot of head shaking, finger pointing, and privileged explanation going on. We wish to seclude the incident and the people involved. To separate it from our history as a nation, to dehumanize the change agents because of their bad and sometimes violent decisions—because if we can separate the underlying racial tensions that clearly exist in our country from the looting and rioting of select individuals, we can continue to ignore the problem.

While the most famous rant against the riots thus far comes from Hercules actor Kevin Sorbo, where he calls the rioters “animals” and “losers,” there are thousands of people echoing these sentiments. Sorbo correctly ascertains that the rioting has little to do with the shooting of an unarmed black man in the street, but he blames it on the typical privileged American’s stereotype of a less fortunate sect of human being—that the looting is a result of frustration built up over years of “blaming everyone else, The Man, for their failures.”

Because when you have succeeded, it ceases to be a possibility, in our capitalist society, that anyone else helped you. And if no one helped you succeed, then no one is holding anyone else back from succeeding. Except they did help you, and they are holding people back. So that blaming someone else for your failures in the United States may very well be an astute observation of reality, particularly as it comes to white privilege versus black privilege. And, yes, they are different, and they are tied to race, and that doesn’t make me a racist, it makes me a realist. If anything, I am racist because I am white. Until I have had to walk in a person of color’s skin, I will never understand, I will always take things for granted, and I will be inherently privileged. But by ignoring the very real issues this country still faces in terms of race to promote an as-of-yet imaginary colorblind society, we contribute to the problem at hand, which is centuries of abuses lobbied against other humans on no basis but that of their skin color.

PHOTOS: FERGUSON IGNITES WITH VIOLENCE OVERNIGHT

BARRETT EMKE FOR TIME

Law enforcement stands in full gear by tanks in Ferguson, Mo. on Nov. 24, 2014

Sorbo is not alone. A webpage devoted to Tea Party politics has hundreds of comments disparaging the rioters, bemoaning the state of our country and very much blaming skin color as the culprit of this debauched way of dealing with the state of our society.

“To hear the libs, one would think that burning and looting are a justifiable way to judge negative events that effect (sic) the black,” one person wrote. “I intentionally used black because of a fact that you do not hear of these events when another skin color is in play. It is about time that the blacks start cleaning their own backyards before they start on ours.”

However, even the Tea Party gets its name from a riot, The Boston Tea Party. For those who need a quick history brush-up, in 1773 American protesters dumped an entire shipment of tea into the Boston Harbor to protest The Tea Act, which colonists maintained violated their rights. In response to this costly protest and civil unrest, the British government enforced The Coercive Acts, ending local government in Massachusetts, which in turn led to the American Revolution and created our great country.

Samuel Adams wrote of the incident, claiming it “was not the act of a lawless mob, but was instead a principled protest and the only remaining option the people had to defend their constitutional rights” according to John K. Alexander, author ofSamuel Adams: America’s Revolutionary Politician.

That protest back in 1773 was meant to effect political and societal change, and while the destruction of property in that case may not have ended in loss of human life, the revolutionthat took place afterward certainly did. What separates a heralded victory in history from an attempt at societal change, a cry for help from the country’s trampled, today? The fact that we won.

In terms of riots being more common in black communities, that is true only when the riots are politically aimed.

The obvious example here is the L.A. Riots of 1992, after the Rodney King beating and verdict. I would put forth that peaceful protesting is a luxury of those already in mainstream culture, those who can be assured their voices will be heard without violence, those who can afford to wait for the change they want.

“I risk sounding racist but if this was a white kid there would be no riot,” another person wrote on the Tea Party page. “History shows us that blacks in this country are more apt to riot than any other population. They are stirred up by racist black people and set out to cause problems. End of story.”

And the racism they are fighting, the racism we are all fighting, is still alive and well throughout our nation. The modern racism may not culminate in separate water fountains and separate seating in the backs of buses, but its insidious nature is perhaps even more dangerous to the individuals who have to live under the shroud of stereotypical lies society foists upon them.

Instead of tearing down other human beings who are acting upon decades of pent-up anger at a system decidedly against them, a system that has told them they are less than human for years, we ought to be reaching out to help them regain the humanity they lost, not when a few set fire to the buildings in Ferguson, but when they were born the wrong color in the post-racial America.

Dozens in Boston face charges for Ferguson protest

By Martin Finucane and Peter Schworm

Dozens of people are facing charges after crowds took to the streets of Boston Tuesday night to protest a grand jury’s decision not to charge a Ferguson, Mo., police officer in the fatal shooting of a black teenager who was unarmed.

Boston police arrested 47 people on charges that include disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace, said police spokesman Officer James Kenneally.
Still, there were no major incidents or injuries reported in the mostly peaceful demonstrations.

“All in all, I think everybody handled themselves pretty well last night,” said Police Commissioner William Evans. “We wanted people to be able to express their frustration but, at the same time, we did want everybody to be safe.”

Demonstrations also took place in other cities around the country, including in New York, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., as the decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown sparked a heated national debate about law enforcement’s relationship with minority communities.

View Graphic
Map: Ferguson protests in US
Though most of the gatherings were peaceful the day after the announcement, many cities saw marchers disrupting traffic and getting into confrontations with police.
Photos: Protesters march
Anthony Braga: Why Boston’s protests were mostly peaceful
Sense of resigned anger in Boston

The Boston marchers faced arraignment Wednesday in Roxbury District Court and Boston Municipal Court. About half those arrested were Boston residents. Most were college students, Kenneally said.

Many were arrested at Melnea Cass Boulevard and Massachusetts Avenue, where there was a sit-in, he said.

Evans said at a news conference that police had gone with a “real soft approach.”

He said he felt the protest went well “because of our whole style,” which includes “great community relations” and a constant dialogue with the community.

He said police recognized a number of the protesters from Occupy Boston, which occupied an area in downtown Boston in 2011.

Police expect protests to continue as long as Ferguson itself is “hot,” but he said, “I’d like to continue dialogue so Boston can be a model of how protests should go.”

At Roxbury District Court, one protester being arraigned painted a less sunny view of how police behaved.

“I was struck in the face by police. They put me in a headlock and dragged me out of the protest group and they hit me in the face, they threw me on the ground. … They handled it pretty poorly,” said David Meredith, a Salem State junior from Revere. Meredith had a black eye, which he said police had inflicted on him.

“I wasn’t shocked. I was appalled, but I wasn’t shocked. The police were being very confrontational. They seemed very angry the entire time,” he said, noting that he saw an officer choking another man, who was holding a camera.
Both Boston police and State Police interacted with demonstrators. It wasn’t clear what agency the officers who confronted Meredith came from.

David Procopio, a State Police spokesman, said that “because of superb cooperation and coordination between State and Boston police, we were able to prevent protesters from entering the Southeast Expressway and the Mass. Turnpike.”

He added that monitoring social media “provided critical intelligence about protesters’ plans to try to disrupt traffic on state highways.”

One state trooper was bitten on the wrist by a protester, Procopio said. He was treated by Boston EMS on the scene.

An estimated 1,400 protesters marched from Dudley Square to the South Bay House of Correction, then onto the Massachusetts Avenue Connector near Interstate 93 before being blocked by police, the Globe reported Wednesday morning

The protesters spread across Boston, through Back Bay and the Financial District, meeting police again in Dewey Square — the former site of the Occupy encampment — outside South Station late Tuesday night, the Globe reported.

State troopers also assisted with other largely peaceful protests in Worcester, Northampton, and Springfield Tuesday night, Procopio said. No tactical and riot-control units were used, though they were on standby.

Procopio said State Police would maintain an increased presence at potential demonstration sites in Boston over the next several days.

Ontake Volcano Eruption In Japan Ontakesan 27/09/2014 | RAW VIDEO

Mount Ontake Volcano Eruption In Japan RAW VIDEO

Japan’s Mount Ontake volcanic eruption traps hikers

BY ANGELA FRITZ

September 30 at 8:15 am

With all of the technology in place to monitor volcanoes and earthquakes, especially in Japan, it’s a fair question to ask: why was there no warning before the deadly eruptionof Mount Ontake in Japan on Saturday?

Compare Mount Ontake’s eruption to that of the recent lava show of Bardarbunga in Iceland. Seismometers in Iceland detected the potential movement of magma about two weeks in advance of the fissure eruption in the Holuhraun lava field, and officials were issuing warnings to surrounding residents well in advance.

But on Mount Ontake, the only warning hikers received on Saturday was a loud boom, “like thunder,” minutes before a massive ashcloud overtook the mountain.

Though it may seem that Saturday’s eruption took scientists by surprise, there’s probably little else they could have done to prevent the tragedy, at least with the current monitoring equipment. And when it comes to predicting the events themselves, “it depends on the type of eruption,” says Joe Dufek, professor of geophysics at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Dufek explains that Saturday’s eruption had a large steam component — what scientists call a phreatic eruption. Red hot magma boiled ground water around the volcano until it exploded and was released as steam, launching ash high into the air. Saturday’s phreatic eruption was similar to those seen on Mount Ontake in 1979, 1991, and 2007.

The difficult aspect of this kind of eruption is that it can go virtually undetected. “An eruption like this doesn’t even require magma to move around,” says Dufek, which means that it wouldn’t have been noticeable on seismometers, like the Iceland eruption was.

Of the 110 active volcanoes in Japan, 47 of them are monitored closely by scientists. Mount Ontake is one of them. Scientists have 12 seismometers on the volcano, as well as five GPS instruments and a tiltmeter, used to measure whether or not the ground is moving. Eleven minutes before the eruption, the seismometers showed a volcanic tremor, but neither the GPS nor the tiltmeter showed any changes.

However, some argue that with different monitoring devices, early signs might have been visible to scientists. David Cyranoski of Nature News writes:

Some volcanoes in Japan, although not Ontake, also have devices for measuring gas release. This could, for example, show whether increased amounts of sulphur dioxide are escaping — a possible sign of an imminent eruption. Some volcanoes also have devices for measuring underground electrical conductivity: an increase in conductivity can signal rising water or magma.

While it was possible for officials to have taken some action prior to the eruption — tremors were recorded earlier this month — the question remains whether that kind of precautionary step would be a good idea, especially when there’s very little evidence suggesting there could even be an eruption. “We could just restrict everywhere, but people don’t want that,” said Toshikazu Tanada, the head of volcano research at the Japan National Research Institute for Earth Science, in an interview with Nature News.

There will likely be future conversations in Japan of how to better predict volcanic eruptions, but Dufek cautions that in fairness, the country’s geo-monitoring system is already quite advanced. “There’s not a lot of lead time in this kind of eruption,” said Dufek. “The monitoring in Japan as a whole is probably the densest network anywhere in the world. If anyone could catch it, it would probably be these guys.”

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Photographing a Catastrophic Explosion at Mt. St. Helens

Volcano erupts at St Helens – Mega Disasters – Documentary

Mt. St. Helens Eruption May 18, 1980 720p HD

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Volcano Eruption – The Eruption of Mt St Helens (1980) – Rare Footage

In 1980, a major volcanic eruption occurred at Mount St. Helens, a volcano located in Washington, in the United States. The eruption (which was a VEI 5 event) was the only significant one to occur in the contiguous 48 U.S. states since the 1915 eruption of Lassen Peak in California.[1] The eruption was preceded by a two-month series of earthquakes and steam-venting episodes, caused by an injection of magma at shallow depth below the volcano that created a huge bulge and a fracture system on the mountain’s north slope.

Fukushima: 108 Active Volcanoes in Japan [IGEO.TV]

NOVA In The Path Of A Killer Volcano

PBS Nova S33E04 Volcano Under the City – Full Documentary

13 Impressively Beautiful Snowcapped Volcanoes of Japan

s part of the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, Japan is one of the countries in the world with so many active and inactive volcanoes. These volcanoes whether active or dormant are popular tourist attractions. These volcanoes are scattered in the different parts of the country which is consists of many islands and islets.

BBC News Syria vote could leave Obama ‘lame duck president’

The Case for Impeaching Barack Obama (Part 1)

The Case for Impeaching Barack Obama (Part 2)

Mistrust overshadows Obama’s Saudi trip

US President Barack Obama meets Saudi King Abdullah Friday as mistrust fuelled by differences over Iran and Syria overshadows a decades-long alliance between their countries.

Obama, who is due to arrive in Saudi Arabia late in the afternoon on a flight from Italy, is expected to hold evening talks with the monarch on a royal estate outside Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia has strong reservations about efforts by Washington and other major world powers to negotiate a deal with Iran on its nuclear programme.

It is also disappointed over Obama’s 11th-hour decision last year not to take military action against the Syrian regime over chemical weapons attacks.

Saudi analyst Abdel Aziz al-Sagr, who heads the Gulf Research Centre, said Saudi-US relations are “tense due to Washington’s stances” on the Middle East, especially Iran.

The recent rapprochement between Tehran and Washington “must not take place at the expense of relations with Riyadh,” Sagr told AFP.

Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia, long wary of Shiite Iran’s regional ambitions, views a November deal between world powers and Iran over the latter’s nuclear programme as a risky venture that could embolden Tehran.

The interim agreement curbs Iran’s controversial nuclear activities in exchange for limited sanctions relief, and is aimed at buying time to negotiate a comprehensive accord.

But Sagr said “arming the Syrian opposition will top the agenda” during Obama’s visit, his second since his election in 2009.

Analyst Khaled al-Dakhil spoke of “major differences” with Washington, adding that Obama will focus on easing “Saudi fears on Iran and on regional security.”

Saudi Arabia, the largest power in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, fears that a possible US withdrawal from the Middle East and a diplomatic overture towards Iran would further feed Tehran’s regional ambitions.

Iranian-Saudi rivalry crystallised with the Syrian conflict: Tehran backs President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, while several GCC states support the rebellion against him.

– ‘Clearing the air’ –

Obama’s stances towards events reshaping the region “have strained (Saudi-US) relations but without causing a complete break,” said Anwar Eshki, head of the Jeddah-based Middle East Centre for Strategic and Legal Studies.

US security and energy specialist professor Paul Sullivan said Obama meeting King Abdullah could “help clear the air on some misunderstandings.”

View gallery

US Secretary of State John Kerry (L) and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah talk before a meeting

“However, I would be quite surprised if there were any major policy changes during this visit. This is also partly a reassurance visit,” he added.

White House spokesman Jay Carney has said that “whatever differences we may have do not alter the fact that this is a very important and close partnership”.

However, Riyadh seems to be reaching out more towards Asia, including China, in an apparent bid to rebalance its international relations.

The US-Saudi relationship dates to the end of World War II and was founded on an agreement for Washington to defend the Gulf state in exchange for oil contracts.

OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia is the world’s top producer and exporter of oil.

Obama and the king are also expected to discuss deadlocked US-brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

They will also discuss Egypt, another bone of contention since the 2011 uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak, who was a staunch US and Saudi ally.

The kingdom was dismayed by the partial freezing of US aid to Egypt after the army toppled Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last July — a move hailed by Riyadh.

On Thursday, Egypt’s Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi resigned as defence minister after announcing he would stand for president.

Meanwhile, dozens of US lawmakers have urged Obama in a letter to publicly address Saudi Arabia’s “systematic human rights violations,” including efforts by women activists to challenge its ban on female drivers.

And rights group Amnesty International said Obama “must break the US administration’s silence on Saudi Arabia’s human rights record by taking a strong public stand against the systematic violations in the kingdom.”

“It is crucial that President Obama sends a strong message to the government of Saudi Arabia that its gross human rights violations and systematic discrimination are unacceptable,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“A failure to do so would undermine the human rights principles the USA purports to stand for,” she added in a statement.

Amnesty also urged Obama to express “dismay” at the kingdom’s ban on women driving as his visit coincides with a local campaign to end the globally unique ban.

“Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson reinstated

A & E lifts suspension on ‘Duck Dynasty’

‘This Week’ Roundtable: ‘Duck Dynasty’ Debate

‘Duck Dynasty’ Reversal Shows GLAAD Has an Expiration Date

A few years ago, I couldn’t imagine a network disregarding GLAAD’s recommendations

By Brandon Ambrosino

Phil v. The Gays. With which will we side? Or rather, against which will we side? This is the question that society demands we answer. Are we anti-Phil or anti-gay or anti-GLAAD or anti-A&E or anti- … ?

Perhaps no other word sums up the Duck Dynasty fiasco as aptly as the word “anti.”

Whenever I hear that someone is anti-this or that, I immediately think of the old quip about MADD – are there any mothers for drunk driving? – and ask myself if anyone is really in favor of the particular thing being protested. Since GLAAD has recently taken a hard-line stance against Phil Robertson’s “anti-gay” comments, I’ve been asking myself a similar question about defamation: Who among us is for it? Most of us are decidedly against defamation, although we choose not to publicly participate in institutional demonstrations to prove how against it we are. But, of course, GLAAD is an institution, and therefore their criticism reverberates at systemic levels.

Founded in 1985 in the wake of the AIDS crisis, GLAAD was formed to protest skewed coverage of LGBT issues and “to put pressure on media organizations to end homophobic reporting.” The original name was an acronym for “Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation,” and although the organization has recently rebranded itself by deciding that the letters G-L-A-A-D aren’t actually going to stand for anything any more, their reputation for protesting defamatory speech is well known both within and without the LGBT community.

It goes without saying that GLAAD has done a great deal of good for the LGBT community, and for that they deserve our applause and honor. As they noted in their announcement heralding their name change, their work continues to educate and influence the greater culture. Historically they’ve been a symbol of inclusion and tolerance, and they’ve worked tirelessly to infuse these values into our controlling media discourses. Frankly, though, I don’t think their hasty reaction to Phil Robertson displayed our LGBT community’s best values.

Before many of us even learned that Phil Robertson was interviewed by GQ, GLAAD had already convinced us that Phil’s words were vile and offensive, and called upon A&E “to re-examine their ties to someone with such public disdain for LGBT people and families.” (I still wonder how many of us – commentators included – have read the actual story in GQ.) A&E offered its own kneejerk response to GLAAD’s kneejerk response, and placed Phil on “indefinite” hiatus, which then prompted some Evangelicals to offer up their own kneejerk response which had something to do with the freedom of speech and now – did I hear this correctly? – Chick-fil-A. In the end, after carefully reviewing all of the responses, A&E issued a final response explaining their decision to lift Phil’s suspension, which resulted in yet another predictable response from GLAAD. I’m not sure how we do it, but we manage to craft responses to our opponents without ever having actual conversations with them.

It isn’t shocking that a conservative Christian duck-hunter from Louisiana has opinions that GLAAD deemed “anti-gay,” and it isn’t shocking that A&E immediately kowtowed to GLAAD at the first drop of the word “homophobic.” What is shocking, however, is that A&E lifted Phil’s hiatus in spite of the fact that they knew GLAAD wasn’t going to be happy about it. A few years ago, I couldn’t imagine a network disregarding GLAAD’s recommendations. A&E is certainly setting a precedent – which makes me wonder about where we are today with queer politics.

In the ’80s and ’90s, GLAAD was necessary, if only because top media outlets needed to be reminded that journalistic ethics applied to AIDS coverage, too. But in 2014, how necessary is GLAAD? I don’t mean to suggest that the organization isn’t doing some good for our world – as I’ve already noted, they are! But as America edges closer and closer to unqualified and full inclusion of LGBT persons, I wonder if an organization whose raison d’etre is to find and shame instances of discrimination isn’t just a bit archaic.

If our goal is to progress beyond defamation against LGBT persons, then that means GLAAD has a sell-by date. To put it in a different, albeit cheekier way: Defamation is good for GLAAD’s business. To bankrupt our society of LGBT defamation would certainly put GLAAD out of work. It’s hard for me to imagine I’m the only one who’s wondered about this. In fact, GLAAD’s recent name-change only confirms that their leadership has been reexamining and revising their purposes moving forward. Again, I’m not suggesting our world doesn’t need GLAAD: There certainly is a place for them. But A&E’s latest reversal should make us question what exactly that place is.http://ideas.time.com/2013/12/28/duck-dynasty-reversal-shows-glaad-has-an-expiration-date/

The American people oppose adding between $7,000 billion to $8,000 billion to the National debt over the next ten years.

The American people oppose the tax hike of repealing Bush tax rate cuts and locking in tax hikes for Obamacare that this bill would enable.

The American people are not fooled by the so-call spending cuts that are in fact only cuts in the rate of growth of the budget baseline and not actual cuts in the budget baseline itself.

The American people oppose yet another increase the national debt ceiling without either a balanced budget amendment being passed by two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate or a balanced budget within three years.

Now is the time for all good tea party members to come to the aid of their country and vote against the Democratic and Republican Party establishment’s compromise bill to raise the National debt ceiling by over $900 billion for Fiscal Year 2011 and add over $7,000 in additional deficit spending and more national debt over the next ten-year.

For the proposed Fiscal Year 2012 and 2013 budgets the total effect on deficits is only a reduction of $21 billion and $42 billion respectively excluding any future reductions of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.

The American people are watching to see if the Tea Party caucus votes as a block to defeat this bill.

Those tea party members who vote in favor of the bill will be challenged in the primaries next year and defeated.

The tea party patriots are not pleased with those Tea Party member who apparently sold out and betrayed the tea party.

The tea party and the American people will be watching.

Should this bill pass the Federal Reserve will start printing money with quantitative easing 3 or creating money to purchase Treasury securities or more debt.

Quantitative Easing 3 or creating more money to buy U.S. Treasury securities will begin in the fall after the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee officially determines that the U.S. Economy has been in a recession since the middle of 2010.

Once it is announced the U.S. economy is again in a recession, the Federal Reserve will use this fact to justify another massive money printing program of over $1,000 billion to finance the deficit spending in Fiscal Year 2012 of over $1,000 billion.

This in turn will lead to inflation or a general rise in the price level.

The economy is currently in a another recession that started in July 2010–the dreaded double dip recession.

The result will be even higher unemployment rates and inflation–stagflation.

This bill is not only not perfect, it is an economic disaster in the making.

Vote for this bill and you will be wrecking the economy, destroying jobs and killing the American dream.

The American people will not forget those who voted for this bill–both Democrats and Republicans.

You do not compromise your principles to vote for this bill especially given the damage this bill will cause to the American people and economy.

In 2012 the tea party will double its numbers in the Congress and the Senate with over 100 Representatives and over 12 Senators who have signed the Fiscal Responsibility Pledge.

Judge: You Can’t Get Out of Debt By Spending

American Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility

“A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.”~Thomas Jefferson

Fiscal Responsibility Pledge

I, ________________________________________, pledge to the taxpayers of the state

of ____________________________, and to the American people that I will:

1. Support and vote for only balanced budgets or surplus budgets where total estimated Federal government tax revenues for each fiscal year equals or exceeds total estimated Federal government spending outlays.

2. Support and vote for only decreases in the national debt ceiling.

3. Support and vote for the FairTax. The FairTax abolishes all federal personal and corporate income taxes, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, and self-employment taxes and replaces them with one simple, visible, federal retail sales tax on new goods and services, and administered primarily by existing state sales tax authorities. Once enacted any changes in the FairTax or increases in the FairTax rate will require two-thirds roll call vote of the House of Representatives and Senate.

4. Support and vote for the repeal of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

5. Support and vote for a balanced budget Amendment to the Constitution of the United State which allows budget surpluses or requires the balancing of tax revenues and spending outlays each fiscal year, limits Federal Government spending to eight-teen percent (18%) of Gross Domestic Product or less, requires a two-thirds majority roll call vote for any proposed tax increase in the House of Representatives and Senate and where the only exception to a surplus budget or balanced budget is the passage of a declaration of war that would require unbalanced budgets and increases in the national debt.

Michael Savage-August 1, 2011 part 3

Baseline Budgeting Explained

US Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions

The NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee

“…The NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee maintains a chronology of the U.S. business cycle. The chronology comprises alternating dates of peaks and troughs in economic activity. A recession is a period between a peak and a trough, and an expansion is a period between a trough and a peak. During a recession, a significant decline in economic activity spreads across the economy and can last from a few months to more than a year. Similarly, during an expansion, economic activity rises substantially, spreads across the economy, and usually lasts for several years.

In both recessions and expansions, brief reversals in economic activity may occur-a recession may include a short period of expansion followed by further decline; an expansion may include a short period of contraction followed by further growth. The Committee applies its judgment based on the above definitions of recessions and expansions and has no fixed rule to determine whether a contraction is only a short interruption of an expansion, or an expansion is only a short interruption of a contraction. The most recent example of such a judgment that was less than obvious was in 1980-1982, when the Committee determined that the contraction that began in 1981 was not a continuation of the one that began in 1980, but rather a separate full recession.

The Committee does not have a fixed definition of economic activity. It examines and compares the behavior of various measures of broad activity: real GDP measured on the product and income sides, economy-wide employment, and real income. The Committee also may consider indicators that do not cover the entire economy, such as real sales and the Federal Reserve’s index of industrial production (IP). The Committee’s use of these indicators in conjunction with the broad measures recognizes the issue of double-counting of sectors included in both those indicators and the broad measures. Still, a well-defined peak or trough in real sales or IP might help to determine the overall peak or trough dates, particularly if the economy-wide indicators are in conflict or do not have well-defined peaks or troughs.

FAQs – Frequently asked Questions and additional information on how the NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee chooses turning points in the Economy …”

“…In spite of the rhetoric being thrown around, the real debate is over how much government spending will increase. No plan under serious consideration cuts spending in the way you and I think about it. Instead, the cuts being discussed are illusory and are not cuts from current amounts being spent, but cuts in prospective spending increases. This is akin to a family saving $100,000 in expenses by deciding not to buy a Lamborghini and instead getting a fully loaded Mercedes when really their budget dictates that they need to stick with their perfectly serviceable Honda.

But this is the type of math Washington uses to mask the incriminating truth about the unrepentant plundering of the American people. The truth is that frightening rhetoric about default and full faith in the credit of the United States being carelessly thrown around to ram through a bigger budget than ever in spite of stagnant revenues. If your family’s income did not change year over year, would it be wise financial management to accelerate spending so you would feel richer? That is what our government is doing, with one side merely suggesting a different list of purchases than the other.

In reality, bringing our fiscal house into order is not that complicated or excruciatingly painful at all. If we simply kept spending at current levels, by their definition of cuts that would save nearly $400 billion in the next few years, versus the $25 billion the Budget Control Act claims to cut. It would only take us five years to cut $1 trillion in Washington math just by holding the line on spending. That is hardly austere or catastrophic.

A balanced budget is similarly simple and within reach if Washington had just a tiny amount of fiscal common sense. Our revenues currently stand at approximately $2.2 trillion a year and are likely to remain stagnant as the recession continues. Our outlays are $3.7 trillion and projected to grow every year. Yet we only have to go back to 2004 for federal outlays of $2.2 trillion, and the government was far from small that year. If we simply referred to that year’s spending levels, which would hardly do us fear, we would have a balanced budget right now. If we held the line on spending and the economy actually did grow as estimated, the budget would balance on its own by 2015 with no cuts whatsoever. …”

Congress moving quickly on debt and spending deal

“…Tea party favorite and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., countered that the deal “spends too much and doesn’t cut enough. … Someone has to say no. I will.”

The government presently borrows more than 40 cents of every dollar it spends, and without an infusion of borrowing authority, the government would face an unprecedented default on U.S. loans and obligations — like $23 billion worth of Social Security pension payments to retirees due Aug. 3.

The increased borrowing authority includes $400 billion that would take effect immediately and $500 billion that Obama could order unless specifically denied by Congress. That $900 billion increase in the debt cap would be matched by savings produced over the coming decade by capping spending on day-to-day agency budgets passed by Congress each year.

A special bipartisan committee would be established to find up to $1.5 trillion in deficit cuts, probably taken from benefit programs like farm subsidies, Medicare and the Medicaid health care program for the poor and disabled. Republicans dismissed the idea that the panel would approve tax increases.

Any agreement by the panel would be voted on by both House and Senate — and if the panel deadlocked, automatic spending cuts would slash across much of the federal budget. Social Security, Medicaid and food stamps would be exempt from the automatic cuts, but payments to doctors, nursing homes and other Medicare providers could be trimmed, as could subsidies to insurance companies that offer an alternative to government-run Medicare.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he’d have to “swallow hard” and vote for the legislation even though he is worried about cuts in defense spending. …”

The Tea Party Caucus is a caucus of the United States House of Representatives and Senate launched and chaired by Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann on July 16, 2010.[1] The caucus is dedicated to promoting fiscal responsibility, adherence to the movement’s interpretation of the Constitution, and limited government. The idea of a Tea Party Caucus originated from Kentucky Senator Rand Paul when he was campaigning for his current seat.[2]

The caucus was approved as an official congressional member organization by the House Administration Committee on July 19, 2010[3] and held its first meeting on July 21. Its first public event was a press conference on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, also on July 21.[4] Four Senators joined the caucus on January 27, 2011.[5]

Members, 112th Congress

The caucus chairman is Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. As of March 31, 2011 the committee has 60 members, all Republicans.[15]

Sandy Adams, Florida

Robert Aderholt, Alabama

Todd Akin, Missouri

Rodney Alexander, Louisiana

Michele Bachmann, Minnesota, Chairman

Roscoe Bartlett, Maryland

Joe Barton, Texas

Gus Bilirakis, Florida

Rob Bishop, Utah

Diane Black, Tennessee

Michael C. Burgess, Texas

Paul Broun, Georgia

Dan Burton, Indiana

John Carter, Texas

Bill Cassidy, Louisiana

Howard Coble, North Carolina

Mike Coffman, Colorado

Chip Cravaack, Minnesota

Ander Crenshaw, Florida

John Culberson, Texas

Jeff Duncan, South Carolina

Blake Farenthold, Texas

Stephen Fincher, Tennessee

John Fleming, Louisiana

Trent Franks, Arizona

Phil Gingrey, Georgia

Louie Gohmert, Texas

Vicky Hartzler, Missouri

Wally Herger, California

Tim Huelskamp, Kansas

Lynn Jenkins, Kansas

Steve King, Iowa

Doug Lamborn, Colorado

Jeff Landry, Louisiana

Blaine Luetkemeyer, Missouri

Kenny Marchant, Texas

Tom McClintock, California

David McKinley, West Virginia

Gary Miller, California

Mick Mulvaney, South Carolina

Randy Neugebauer, Texas

Rich Nugent, Florida

Steve Pearce, New Mexico

Mike Pence, Indiana

Ted Poe, Texas

Tom Price, Georgia

Denny Rehberg, Montana

Phil Roe, Tennessee

Dennis Ross, Florida

Ed Royce, California

Steve Scalise, Louisiana

Tim Scott, South Carolina

Pete Sessions, Texas

Adrian Smith, Nebraska

Lamar Smith, Texas

Cliff Stearns, Florida

Tim Walberg, Michigan

Joe Walsh, Illinois

Allen West, Florida

Lynn Westmoreland, Georgia

Joe Wilson, South Carolina

Members of Senate Caucus

Jim DeMint (South Carolina)[5]

Mike Lee (Utah)[5]

Jerry Moran (Kansas)

Rand Paul (Kentucky)[5]

Aronoff: Media’s Disgraceful Coverage of Debt-Ceiling Debate

“…The general performance of the media during the debt ceiling debate has been atrocious. The currency of journalists consists of words, and by completely debasing that currency, they are undermining their profession. They are also making it that much more difficult for the public to understand the choices and the consequences they are facing.

The constant reference to August 2nd being the date we default on our debt is utterly false. ABC has shown a “Countdown to Default” clock, ticking away to August 2nd. CNN has run similar graphics, as have all the networks, including the Fox News Channel. Even today MSNBC is showing a graphic that says, “Four Days to Default.” They have continued right through this week. Default occurs only if and when the U.S. fails to make interest payments to the bondholders on the debt it owes. Not only is August 2nd not the day the U.S. defaults on its debt, but the issue could easily be taken off the table, and President Obama could calm the markets by announcing that under no circumstances will he allow the U.S. to default, and he could assure that by saying he will definitely make that payment the highest priority until a deal is reached in Congress. Instead, he chose to have the debt ceiling “used as a gun against the heads” of Americans, which is exactly what he accused the Republicans of doing earlier this month, in language that was supposed to be no longer acceptable after the tragic shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson last January.

Charles Gasparino of Fox Business News reported this week that the Obama administration has begun calling major Wall Street banks to assure them that the U.S. won’t default on its debt. Sources have told me that the administration is also trying to get the banks to lobby on its behalf.

The other egregious falsehood reveals an astounding lack of knowledge, or willingness to deceive, about the difference between the deficit and the national debt. Here, for example, from Jake Tapper of ABC News: “The president continues to push for a ‘grand bargain,’ buoyed by the bipartisan ‘Gang of Six’ proposal that would reduce the deficit by $3.7 trillion over the next decade through spending cuts and tax increases.”

And here, from Stephanie Condon of CBS News: “The deal would reduce the deficit by nearly $4 trillion…”

President Obama in his July 25th prime time address to the country said, “This balanced approach asks everyone to give a little without requiring anyone to sacrifice too much. It would reduce the deficit (emphasis added) by around $4 trillion and put us on a path to pay down our debt.

This misuse of the language has been the rule, not the exception. As explained on the Treasury Department’s own website, “The deficit is the difference between the money Government takes in, called receipts, and what the Government spends, called outlays, each year.” (emphasis added) The same website says that “One way to think about the debt is as accumulated deficits.” This is basic economics, but astonishingly, the President and most of the media constantly get it wrong. Is it on purpose, to mislead, or do they not understand the difference? …”

Baseline (budgeting)

“…Baseline budgeting is a method of developing a budget which uses existing spending levels as the basis for establishing future funding requirements. The concept assumes that the organization is generally headed in the right direction and only minor changes in spending levels will be required. The baseline is normally enhanced by adding adjustment factors based on issues such as inflation, new programs, and anticipated changes to existing programs.

The genesis of baseline budget projections can be found in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. That act required the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to prepare projections of federal spending for the upcoming fiscal year based on a continuation of the existing level of governmental services. It also required the newly established Congressional Budget Office to prepare five-year projections of budget authority, outlays, revenues, and the surplus or deficit. OMB published its initial current-services budget projections in November 1974, and CBO’s five-year projections first appeared in January 1976. Today’s baseline budget projections are very much like those prepared more than two decades ago, although they now span 10 years instead of five.

The Budget Act was silent on whether to adjust estimates of discretionary appropriations for anticipated changes in inflation. Until 1980, OMB’s projections excluded inflation adjustments for discretionary programs. CBO’s projections, however, assumed that appropriations would keep pace with inflation, although CBO has also published projections without these so-called discretionary inflation adjustments.

CBO’s budget projections took on added importance in 1980 and 1981, when they served as the baseline for computing spending reductions to be achieved in the budget reconciliation process. The reconciliation instructions contained in the fiscal year 1982 budget resolution (the so-called Gramm-Latta budget) required House and Senate committees to reduce outlays by a total of $36 billion below baseline levels, but each committee could determine how those savings were to be achieved. The CBO baseline has been used in every year since 1981 for developing budget resolutions and measuring compliance with reconciliation instructions.

The Deficit Control Act of 1985 provided the first legal definition of baseline. For the most part, the act defined the baseline in conformity with previous usage. If appropriations had not been enacted for the upcoming fiscal year, the baseline was to assume the previous year’s level without any adjustment for inflation. In 1987, however, the Congress amended the definition of the baseline so that discretionary appropriations would be adjusted to keep pace with inflation. Other technical changes to the definition of the baseline were enacted in 1990, 1993, and 1997.

Baseline budget projections increasingly became the subject of political debate and controversy during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and more recently during the 2011 debt limit debate. Some critics contend that baseline projections create a bias in favor of spending by assuming that federal spending keeps pace with inflation and other factors driving the growth of entitlement programs. Changes that merely slow the growth of federal spending programs have often been described as cuts in spending, when in reality they are actually reductions in the rate of spending growth.

There have been attempts to eliminate the baseline budget concept and replace it with zero based budgeting, which is the opposite of baseline budgeting. Zero based budgeting requires that all spending must be re-justified each year or it will be eliminated from the budget regardless of previous spending levels.

“An estimate of spending, revenue, the deficit or surplus, and the public debt expected during a fiscal year under current laws and current policy. The baseline is a benchmark for measuring the budgetary effects of proposed changes in revenues and spending. It assumes that receipts and mandatory spending will continue or expire in the future as required by law and that the future funding for discretionary programs will equal the most recently enacted appropriation, adjusted for inflation. Under the Budget Enforcement Act (BEA), which will expire at the end of fiscal year 2006, the baseline is defined as the projection of current-year levels of new budget authority, outlays, revenues, and the surplus or deficit into the budget year and outyears based on laws enacted through the applicable date.

CBO Baseline

Projected levels of governmental receipts (revenues), budget authority, and outlays for the budget year and subsequent fiscal years, assuming generally that current policies remain the same, except as directed by law. The baseline is described in the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) annual report for the House and Senate Budget Committees, The Budget and Economic Outlook, which is published in January. The baseline, by law, includes projections for 5 years, but at the request of the Budget Committees, CBO has provided such projections for 10 years. In most years the CBO baseline is revised in conjunction with CBO’s analysis of the President’s budget, which is usually issued in March, and again during the summer. The “March” baseline is the benchmark for measuring the budgetary effects of proposed legislation under consideration by Congress.” …”

Rasmussen Reports

Most Voters Are Unhappy With Both Sides in the Debt Ceiling Debate

“…Most voters don’t care much for the way either political party is performing in the federal debt ceiling debate.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 58% of Likely U.S. Voters at least somewhat disapprove of the way President Obama and congressional Democrats are handling the debate over the debt ceiling, with 38% who Strongly Disapprove. But 53% also disapprove of how congressional Republicans are handling the debate, including 32% who Strongly Disapprove.

Just 36% approve of how Obama and Democrats are doing, with 10% who Strongly Approve. Forty percent (40%) approve of the GOP’s performance, including 13% who Strongly Approve. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

While the two sides continue to wrangle over how to avoid defaulting on the government’s massive debt load, most voters nationwide are worried the final deal will raise taxes too much and cut spending too little.

Whatever spending cuts are in the final deal, 49% of all voters don’t think the government will actually cut the spending agreed upon. A commentary by Scott Rasmussen,published in Politico, put it this way: “Based on the history of the past few decades, voters have learned that politicians promising unspecified spending cuts should be treated with all the credibility of a six-year old boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar promising to be good for the rest of his life.” …”

Rasmussen Reports

55% Oppose Tax Hike In Debt Ceiling Deal

“…As the Beltway politicians try to figure out how they will raise the debt ceiling and for how long, most voters oppose including tax hikes in the deal.

Just 34% think a tax hike should be included in any legislation to raise the debt ceiling. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 55% disagree and say it should not. …”

“…There is a huge partisan divide on the question. Fifty-eight percent (58%) of Democrats want a tax hike in the deal while 82% of Republicans do not. Among those not affiliated with either major political party, 35% favor a tax hike and 51% are opposed.

Americans who earn more than $75,000 a year are evenly divided as to whether a tax hike should be included in the debt ceiling deal. Those who earn less are opposed to including tax hikes.

Voters remain very concerned about the debt ceiling issue. Sixty-nine percent (69%) believe that it would be bad for the economy if a failure to raise the debt ceiling led to government defaults. Only 6% believe it would be good for theeconomy. Fourteen percent (14%) believe it would have no impact and 11% are notsure. These figures are little changed from a few weeks ago. …”

House passes Ryan’s ’12 budget; conservatives want more cuts

By Erik Wasson and Pete Kasperowicz – 04/15/11

“…The House on Friday approved a fiscal year 2012 budget resolution from Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) that seeks to drastically limit government spending next year and in years to follow.

But the vote on the measure — which imposes $5.8 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade — came after a clear sign that at least half of the Republican Caucus supports even tougher spending cuts.

The final tally was 235-193, with four Republicans opposing it. They were Reps. Ron Paul (Texas), Denny Rehberg (Mont.), Walter Jones (N.C.) and David McKinley (W.Va.).

Rehberg, the appropriator in charge of health spending, is running for Montana’s Senate seat.

Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said listening sessions with Republican members made it the strongest vote of the year.

House passes cut, cap and balance — and a deal is in sight

“…The Republican-controlled House defied a presidential veto threat Tuesday night in approving a bill to amend the Constitution to require a balanced federal budget. But Speaker John A. Boehner acknowledged that a backup plan is needed, and a Senate GOP leader said he expects such an alternative to win his chamber’s approval.

The House voted 234 to 190 in favor of the “Cut, Cap and Balance Act,” which the White House has said will be vetoed in the unlikely event it passes the Senate and reaches President Obama’s desk. Faced with those prospects, Boehner told reporters that it would also be responsible to consider a backup plan for raising the federal debt ceiling and thus averting a potentially disastrous default on U.S. obligations.

American Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility

“A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.”~Thomas Jefferson

Fiscal Responsibility Pledge

I, ________________________________________, pledge to the taxpayers of the state

of ____________________________, and to the American people that I will:

1. Support and vote for only balanced budgets or surplus budgets where total estimated Federal government tax revenues for each fiscal year equals or exceeds total estimated Federal government spending outlays.

2. Support and vote for only decreases in the national debt ceiling.

3. Support and vote for the FairTax. The FairTax abolishes all federal personal and corporate income taxes, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, and self-employment taxes and replaces them with one simple, visible, federal retail sales tax on new goods and services, and administered primarily by existing state sales tax authorities. Once enacted any changes in the FairTax or increases in the FairTax rate will require two-thirds roll call vote of the House of Representatives and Senate.

4. Support and vote for the repeal of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

5. Support and vote for a balanced budget Amendment to the Constitution of the United State which allows budget surpluses or requires the balancing of tax revenues and spending outlays each fiscal year, limits Federal Government spending to eight-teen percent (18%) of Gross Domestic Product or less, requires a two-thirds majority roll call vote for any proposed tax increase in the House of Representatives and Senate and where the only exception to a surplus budget or balanced budget is the passage of a declaration of war that would require unbalanced budgets and increases in the national debt.

Ron Paul Ad – Conviction

DEBT CEILING | Ron Paul | Debt Crisis

Michele Bachmann: Courage

Raising the Debt Ceiling: It Just Makes Sense. Not.

America is bankrupt

Laurence Kotlikof

“…THE US has a fiscal gap—the present value of all its future spending (including servicing its official debt) less all its future taxes of $202 trillion—almost 14 times GDP. Greece, by comparison, has a fiscal gap of about 11 times GDP. To close the US fiscal gap would require raising all federal taxes, immediately and permanently by almost two thirds!

The Economist as well as all other financial media as well as virtually all economists (academic and business) and policymakers are focusing on the official debt. For the US, the official debt is $9 trillion. This is minor compared to the fiscal gap, which includes all liabilities, official and unofficial. The fiscal gap is huge compare to the official debt because Uncle Sam has spent six decades accumulating massive obligations to make social insurance payments, which it carefully kept off the books. …”

U.S. funding for future promises lags by trillions

By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY

“…The government added $5.3 trillion in new financial obligations in 2010, largely for retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. That brings to a record $61.6 trillion the total of financial promises not paid for.

This gap between spending commitments and revenue last year equals more than one-third of the nation’s gross domestic product.

Medicare alone took on $1.8 trillion in new liabilities, more than the record deficit prompting heated debate between Congress and the White House over lifting the debt ceiling.

Social Security added $1.4 trillion in obligations, partly reflecting longer life expectancies. Federal and military retirement programs added more to the financial hole, too.

Corporations would be required to count these new liabilities when they are taken on — and report a big loss to shareholders. Unlike businesses, however, Congress postpones recording spending commitments until it writes a check.

The $61.6 trillion in unfunded obligations amounts to $528,000 per household. That’s more than five times what Americans have borrowed for everything else — mortgages, car loans and other debt. It reflects the challenge as the number of retirees soars over the next 20 years and seniors try to collect on those spending promises.

“The (federal) debt only tells us what the government owes to the public. It doesn’t take into account what’s owed to seniors, veterans and retired employees,” says accountant Sheila Weinberg, founder of the Institute for Truth in Accounting, a Chicago-based group that advocates better financial reporting. “Without accurate accounting, we can’t make good decisions.” …”

A SUMMARY OF THE 2011 ANNUAL REPORTS
Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees

A MESSAGE TO THE PUBLIC:

Each year the Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds report on the current and projected financial status of the two programs. This message summarizes our 2011 Annual Reports.

The financial conditions of the Social Security and Medicare programs remain challenging. Projected long-run program costs for both Medicare and Social Security are not sustainable under currently scheduled financing, and will require legislative modifications if disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers are to be avoided.

The long-run financial challenges facing Social Security and Medicare should be addressed soon. If action is taken sooner rather than later, more options and more time will be available to phase in changes so that those affected have adequate time to prepare. Earlier action will also afford elected officials with a greater opportunity to minimize adverse impacts on vulnerable populations, including lower-income workers and those who are already substantially dependent on program benefits.

Both Social Security and Medicare, the two largest federal programs, face substantial cost growth in the upcoming decades due to factors that include population aging as well as the growth in expenditures per beneficiary. Through the mid-2030s, due to the large baby-boom generation entering retirement and lower-birth-rate generations entering employment, population aging is the largest single factor contributing to cost growth in the two programs. Thereafter, the continued rapid growth in health care cost per beneficiary becomes the larger factor.